Thirsty? Then you might want to quench that thirst before venturing into this scorching audial landscape. Avant-garde Norwegians Virus are looking to offer you a journey you'll most likely never forget. The prolific Czral is taking his jazzy dissonance and placing it smack bang in the middle of the Palm Desert.

The eerie metallic guitar work of this desert is supplanted on top of a plateau of desert rock of the likes of Yawning Man and Kyuss, most especially the former. It is primarily through the drums and bass that such a likeness is obtained, Einar Sjurso and Bjeima, respectively, manage to keep up a consistent reference to their Palm Desert inspirations. The album certainly does a good job of conjuring up images of an unrelenting sun blazing down upon a desolate wasteland. Once you enter this environment, it does not for a moment let up, Czral's near constant and bizarre vocals are interwoven amongst the jarring guitars which beat down riffs like waves of heat, both complimenting the other.

Oops, never realized they even had a new album out! In regards to that post-metal comment above, I'd say that's entirely accurate. Tbh, I'm much more into Ved Buens Ende than Virus, because I've simply listened to more VBE, but those guys were so incredibly bizarre back in the day that they were probably the first post-black metal band around (maybe In The Woods... could be considered so as well).

01, 02, 03, 09 would have created an excellent EP. Yep, I have a 'fillers problem' with this one. When their last album moved quite flawlessly onwards by bringing groovy madness and hypnotic vortexes, this one just dwells too long at the desert repeating some 'ok this is nice, but go on, please' -stuff.